Troll models in 6.2.

[Oggudrai]

If only the character artists were as passionate as some of the people here

That's the thing, I bet many of them very well might be... Which has me assuming that there's either management meddling, not allowing them to finish the more unfinished models, or - as was implied in one of the interviews from the summit - they just felt they had to prioritize art resources in terms of new animations and artifact weapons for Legion... They're probably desperate to get it out there, and I assume that even if they have any plans of addressing the issues with any of the revamped models, let alone the Troll male, it won't happen until post-launch Legion...

Of course, it would be nice if they just told us this when we contact them directly with this feedback, if that is indeed the case...

[Oggudrai]

Again, I'm trying to understand how much work actually goes in to tweaking a character model, not just making a new one from scratch to try and recreate an old one (as they need to do with the Worgen and Goblins) in comparison to all these mounts they make while simultaneousy saying there's so much pressure on art resources that they can mostly only focus on certain projects at once.

I suppose the animators would be the ones who have the least bit of time and resources to spare at the moment, what with the improvements to combat in terms of visual flair; which might explain why the braid and the back are amongst things they can't tweak on the Troll male, since it seems the main cause for those flaws would be the rigging... Most mounts use already existing skeletons and animation rigs so I guess that explains why mounts aren't too costly in terms of Legion's art development.

Hopefully I'm not the only one that's asked about the model(s) for the upcoming Q&A tomorrow... Even if I am here's hoping they bother to speak out about the model. At this rate I'd accept a general admission that they're uneven in quality and that it should be addressed, even if they don't specifically mention the Troll models.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm on the PTR and noticed one tweak, actually. To a certain extent it seems they've tried to fix the off-angle arrow when shooting with the Troll male... A second before flying off however it suddenly jumps to hover in the air above the bow before being shot. During shot abilities however you can se it relatively brifly and during that animation the arrow remains off-angle...

I'd make a gif but my framerate is just absolute crap atm.

[Leiandri]

I don't know if you've already noticed or not but on the beta night elf ladies had finally gotten their eyelashes back. If anything this shows that they are still tweaking the player models. I haven't checked male trolls but maybe they had some changes as well?

[Thoughtful Trolli]

they should just give the female trolls men's faces and mastectomies and that's the new body done let's do lunch.

[Oggudrai]

I don't know if you've already noticed or not but on the beta night elf ladies had finally gotten their eyelashes back. If anything this shows that they are still tweaking the player models. I haven't checked male trolls but maybe they had some changes as well?

I'm happy for the Night Elves then, though I'm hoping they'll eventually get textures as polished as those of demon hunters... can't be that hard, just tweak the DH textures to not involve any demonic traits and they're golden in terms of quality, if not similarity to the original...

As for the Troll male, as I said just above, the only thing I saw was that they've tried fixing their off-angle bow-shooting. Alas, they only fixed it half-way, it goes off-angle again when you use abilities the likes of arcane-shot... and in general, just before firing off, the arrow suddenly teleports just above the Troll's shoulder and hovers there for a second.

I would really appreciate something more than bandaid fixes... Which amounts to the only manner of fixes they've gotten for all this time.

I suppose I should be happy they're trying and even touching them at all though.

[Ramz]

The bow animation is indeed fixed, except that at least on male during the arcane shot trigger the arrow at the very last second positions itself back to weird angle.




Male bow bug :






Thre are also updated new druid forms.. and ehh the crack cats are not tweaked by tiny bit, howver I have to say that they have nice cool feature - when you enter dark place their eyes glow.

You can help by sending feedback through PTR by sending this link: http://imgur.com/I2AkAkY

If someone is good in Datamining I'd be grateful if someone would get the files from troll catform. I can edit it in 3D program and alter the textures.

[Leiandri]

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this already or not but in addition of adding eyelashes to female night elves and fixing many of the helmet graphics for all the races they've also fixed my biggest annoyance with the female troll model since its inception during the Warlords beta - the infamous shoulder armor displacement bug.



I am not sure if you can see the difference from those screenshots (live on the left and beta on the right) but I can assure you that it looks much better now with significant reduction of clipping, especially on the smaller size shoulder pads.

[Oggudrai]

Well, that's something at least... I'm happy for you Leiandri, congrats on getting one of your bigger gripes addressed

Meanwhile, zilch with the Troll male in regards to my biggest issues with it though... I've been badgering them endlessly, I'm at the end of my rope and even with beta access I can barely be arsed to offer feedback anymore.

[Ramz]

Oh that's nice! Troll female is reaching perfection, while male is... eh...

I tried to get some troll lore stuff from Legion, but they're too busy jerking over demon hunters, Khadgar and Sylvanas so... I kinda lost my interest in this game, but if you have any news I'll ofc update the OP helping to keep a track on what is going on.

[Oggudrai]

https://twitter.com/Tysmurph/status/783882902660538368

Ok, so even though mr. Tyson Murphy doesn't work at Blizzard anymore, he was kind enough to give our thread a look and provide his opinion on the feedback therein. I think that despite the fact that this has no practical effect whatsoever it's definitely valuable for discussion.

Again, this is still not official word from Blizzard but I figure if this is Mr Murphy's position it wouldn't surprise me if that was the overall conclusion by the folks aware/"responsible" for the Troll male as well.

I respectfully disagree with him, in that I don't agree that fixing the braid, the back, bringing texture quality and muscle definition up to par with more polished models and tweaking certain animations to be more similar to original ones would only constitute a mere 1% of improvement. Maybe it's still not a high percent, but definitely more than just 1.

Furthermore, there have been tweaks to superior models that I -would- actually describe as 1% improvements (small facial changes to female nelf, human and draenei/weapon size come to mind) so... not sure why these have higher priority than the Troll male and other models, would seem an inconsistent treatment to me if this was -hypothetically- to be the reasoning behind leaving the Troll male as is for so long...

But then again he's the professional artist, so maybe that makes me the idiot... I'm hoping he'll answer my question regarding what he actually considered legitimate issues.

For people here that might feel the need to contact him themselves about this (I doubt anyone does, but just in case) I think it's important to keep in mind that again; he's not at Blizzard anymore, it's "just" his opinion, but I think we're fortunate he even shared this much insight/perspective on the feedback.

[Ramz]

https://twitter.com/Tysmurph/status/783882902660538368

Ok, so even though mr. Tyson Murphy doesn't work at Blizzard anymore, he was kind enough to give our thread a look and provide his opinion on the feedback therein. I think that despite the fact that this has no practical effect whatsoever it's definitely valuable for discussion.

Again, this is still not official word from Blizzard but I figure if this is Mr Murphy's position it wouldn't surprise me if that was the overall conclusion by the folks aware/"responsible" for the Troll male as well.

I respectfully disagree with him, in that I don't agree that fixing the braid, the back, bringing texture quality and muscle definition up to par with more polished models and tweaking certain animations to be more similar to original ones would only constitute a mere 1% of improvement. Maybe it's still not a high percent, but definitely more than just 1.

Furthermore, there have been tweaks to superior models that I -would- actually describe as 1% improvements (small facial changes to female nelf, human and draenei/weapon size come to mind) so... not sure why these have higher priority than the Troll male and other models, would seem an inconsistent treatment to me if this was -hypothetically- to be the reasoning behind leaving the Troll male as is for so long...

But then again he's the professional artist, so maybe that makes me the idiot... I'm hoping he'll answer my question regarding what he actually considered legitimate issues.

For people here that might feel the need to contact him themselves about this (I doubt anyone does, but just in case) I think it's important to keep in mind that again; he's not at Blizzard anymore, it's "just" his opinion, but I think we're fortunate he even shared this much insight/perspective on the feedback.

WTF?! Is he serious? The Texture quality is not incorrect! It is very visible when compared to other models! And what about animations? There are clipping issues and all of them are recorded this IS a doable stuff! "Profesional artist" I am artist too and I am doing similar stuff aswell, I might not work for Blizzard but I sure as heck was playing a lot with textures that's for sure, and I can tell which one is low quality and which one is high quality. With troll male it's a matter of shading that is very much off and that there is little attention given to arm and leg texture which looks just off becuase it's so oddly stretched, and the muscles just don't look right.

And regarding animation- how obvious bugs and clipping is something to disagre with?
Unless he was talking about troll male walking animation? Well then it's true it's a matter of opinion on who likes what. But in case of casting animation - you have to be kidding me. It looks super painful to look at that, and I'm not sure if bending in this way is even correct.


I don't like his attitude at all. Looks like I have to do stuff myself to show that it's not a whim. However making model alone and applying it to game could be a trouble.

While I also don't sound nice aswell, it's becuase I did a lot of effort to pin point everything to show exactly what is wrong and how to correct it, - like with the bum and arm shape. It's very small change but it DOES makes difference.

And as Oggudrai said, we have some hypocritical double standart treatment. Some models were given touch-ups, and the troll male that is one of the most unfinished models is left alone.

-_-

[Oggudrai]

Regarding him disagreeing with the animations, if that's the case with Blizzard's currently, still hired artists (cus again, Tyson Murphy doesn't work there anymore) well... tough, it's not in line with what we were promised... One thing is to "improve" an animation, but some of these have been warped by way, way too much artistic liberty and again; it's not what they promised us! They said "the same, but HD", they said "you'll recognize your characters", and then assistant game director Ion Hazzikostas (and now new lead director) even said "we'll do everything we can to maintain your connection to your characters".

So, yeah... I respectfully disagree if any of these artists don't find the feedback calling for changes to animations to be made closer to the original ones to be relevant, because we're asking for it based on what lead developers told us we'd get, and didn't get. Animations are especially important to this, because the personality, the identity of your character is the most apparent to everyone through the animations. Regardless of if they care about the models or not, if they're transmogged in a more revealing manner or dressed from head to toe in full plate; there's nothing you can do to hide how your character moves. It's one of the things that have alienated people the most from their characters, hence the considerable outcry over the original animations getting replaced in the old models back when the pre-patch for Legion was released, and even before when the PTR for it was running.

and yeah, I agree regarding your "diagnosis" of their underdetailed body textures, their shoulders especially are stretched out and you can tell due to the pixellation, triceps are too low and I've never seen any brachialis muscle shaped like that (the muscle between triceps and biceps on the outer arm).

But these are all things we've gone over already... granted, not everything is in the OP or the first page because there's just no more room...

[Al Gorefiend]

I feel like if these issues were on one of the "Big 3" races they'd be higher priority. They even specifically mentioned BE female weapon sizes publicly.

Feels bad man, that your favorite race in the game is also among the lowest played and therefore "low priority".

[Ramz]

Well too bad they didn't fix the troll female weapon size while they were at it. Those are huge strong jungle women and their weapons are usually just as small :/ - and it doesn't feel right.

As for what Hambugged said- it just puts Blizzard into bad light if they ditch race becuase it's not popular, that's anything BUT professional.

I still can't believe he said that texure thing is incorrect, specially when I posted one where you could see that entire ear texture is blurred compared to wrinkles on the face texture -_-

You can even see the line around the ear for crying out loud :

[Oggudrai]

I feel like if these issues were on one of the "Big 3" races they'd be higher priority. They even specifically mentioned BE female weapon sizes publicly.

Feels bad man, that your favorite race in the game is also among the lowest played and therefore "low priority".

Idk, apparently Dwarves aren't all that popular, and Nelves are one of the more popular races and yet their non-DH models have the absolute worst textures of the playable models... at least in terms of details like shading, highlights, veins etc.

That said, the Troll male has a lot more issues other than textures, arguably much worse than most other models if not every other PC model in certain aspects, that's been left entirely unattended... But Trolls are shafted in every other way too so, it's probably not farfetched that it's notjust a coincidence... I don't see what other conclusion I am to draw with how fans of this particular race are being effectively shunned.

[Traveler Voltin]

blizzard doesnt care.

[Yarathir]

I think he assumed we meant resolution, but no. It's the actual texture detail, that which is part of the art, not the technical side, like the DPI count or filesize. The troll female skin texture is just plain more detailed from an artistic standpoint, and the ears on the male troll need to be altered not only texture-wise, but also model-wise. Still, they look like flat pieces of cardboard taped to the head with no real organic transition into the head.

[Ramz]

^ Yeah pretty much.

I also posted comparision picture of feet, and the picture of texture detail to Ogre one to see how enormous gap there is. It's about details, shading and proper transition between the pieces. If you look at troll male neck you can see that there is outline between neck and head, where the transition from neck to head should be invisible, as it is on other models and on the female counterpart.


Besides I wanted to ask about other model upgades as I lost track on what was going on in regards with other models.

But admittedly Murphy's comments made me angry becuase he dissed almost everything - I realise that taking a critic on your own work isn't easy but everything was done in order to improve and help and not to bash on the artists. And yet he sees it all and labels it as non-issue.

I know that propositions in regard of extra animations could be unrealistic - but this is why it's under "suggestion" section. However majority of the issues marked here the clipping issues or lack of faithfullness to original ones and troll male had one of the best imo, which couldn't be said about slow and very default ones of the female.

Eh I'm starting to lose investment there - for 3 months I am unsubbed and honestly the Vol'Jin case was the last thing I could handle, but I still try to help from artistic stand point, even if game no longer excites me.

If WoW Model Viewer will be updated I'll post some more work - I am specially interested in catfrom texture.

[Syegfryed]

anyone noticed the bug with troll druids fangs? when the tiger open the mouth the up fangs stretch as if they were made of plastic or rubber

[Oggudrai]

I hadn't, no, thanks for making me aware at least...

On that note, Troll male's tusks move like frikking pincers throughout certain emote animations as well as the jump animation.